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Ask Dave Taylor: Is Facebook graph search good or evil?

By Dave Taylor, For the Camera

Posted:
01/20/2013 12:26:32 AM MST

Updated:
01/20/2013 12:27:24 AM MST

Privacy's a constant challenge in the online world. If it's not hackers stealing thousands of customer records, its companies deciding that they can do what they want with your data and "social graph," the list of who you're connected with and who they're connected with. I mean, you didn't really want to have any privacy in your life anymore, did you?

It's former Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy who first told me "Privacy is dead. Get over it." Almost 15 years ago. Quite prescient, I'd say.

The latest salvo against our privacy is from a familiar source: Facebook.

Earlier this month they released a new service with the unwieldy name of "Facebook Graph Search," letting users explore the entire historical dataset of friends, friends of friends and everyone who has posted material of any sort to the public.

For years we insiders have been waiting for Facebook to take their first step into the world of search, as they're an obvious competitor to Google in that space. In fact, there are over a billion searches made every day on Facebook already. Most people just don't realize it's a search when they type a friend's name or organization name into the little box at the top of the page.

The precious resource that Facebook has, however, isn't a huge amount of raw data -- Google's had that for years -- but rather how the data is interrelated. When I post a photo of my friend Jon and I and tag us both, that's interesting information for his friends and mine.

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Add the deep base of information that Facebook has for each and every one of us and it's a simple jump to doing searches like "which of my friends have been to Bangladesh?" or "which of my friends or their friends currently works at Disney?"

But remember, all public data's fair game too, so imagine the impact of "everyone who lives in Colorado and went to UCLA in the 1980s?" or "people who currently list their profession as 'actor' and formerly worked at a restaurant?"

Pundits have labeled this "stalker search" because of exactly what Facebook seeks to capitalize upon: the interpersonal relationships and what that illuminates in the vast sea of data on the site.

How much data? Facebook now has over a billion active users, 81 percent of whom are outside North America, and 604 million active mobile users. Posting billions of items of information each and every day, whether it's a status update, a location check-in, a photo or a link to content elsewhere on the Internet. And "likes." And "shares."

It's all fair game for social search.

To be fair, all the information is already sitting out there on the Facebook servers. If you posted things five years ago, they're still accessible. It's just that social search makes it much easier to find this information, not just for your friends, but for everyone.

Good? Evil? I'll let you decide. But I'm going back to my first year or so of postings -- which is a pain -- and double checking that there's nothing that'd prove awkward or inappropriate if it were to resurface in a far more visible manner.

Bill was right, unfortunately. Privacy really is dead. We just haven't really fully accepted it yet.

Dave Taylor has been involved with the online world for over thirty years and covers the tech world at AskDaveTaylor.com. You can also find him on Twitter as @DaveTaylor

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